MacBook Air, iTunes movie rentals and new iPhone software launch at MWSF

Side view of the new “Macbook Air”

The MacWorld San Francisco keynote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs came and went yesterday. I have to admit that I’m left pretty unimpressed. I haven’t watched the full keynote, but judging from the announcements that came out, nothing really blew me away. Of course, I bring higher than reasonable expectations into each keynote. Here are my impressions of the high points.

MacBook Air: This is an ultra-thin addition to the Macbook family. It’s less than one inch thick at it’s thickest point. It has a 64GB solid state storage option (for a whopping $999). It sacrifices and optical drive for space, but features an ability to “borrow” an optical drive from another Mac or PC on the network. I think the thinness is cool, but it won’t fit in my pocket, so I’d still rather spend all that cash on a loaded MacBook Pro.

iTunes Movie rentals: This idea interests me, but until I have an HDTV and an Apple TV, I really have no use for it. Given that the library already includes around 100 HD-quality movies, and I do have a new 20″ HD display on my computer, I might try this out to see if an Apple TV is really worth getting when the new TV comes (hopefully soon).

Apple TV: Along with movie rentals, they also released an updated Apple TV and dropped the price to $229.

iPhone software update: Updates are available that allow for a customizable home screen, enhanced mapping with psuedo-GPS for figuring out where you are, and multi-recipient SMS capability. Alas, no news on hardware updates, though. The new maps app is cool, but it guesses your location based on your relationship to cell towers and wi-fi routers instead of GPS. I want an iPhone badly, but I think I can wait until a 3G version comes out, especially now that AT&T has 3G in Oklahoma City, and it is really fast. Maybe 3G and true GPS are coming this year. If so, I’m all over it.

Time Capsule: This is a product that I just might buy soon. They have basically released an AirPort wi-fi base station with a hard drive in it that is capable of acting as a wireless backup disk with Leopard’s Time Machine. I’m currently in the market for two things: a) a hard drive for backup and b) an 802.11n wi-fi router with Gigabit Ethernet. This has them all. So I am definitely going to check this one out.

Those are the high points. I’m looking forward to watch the keynote to see if there is anything I missed. Overall fairly ho-hum compared to previous years, but it’s clear Apple doesn’t save everything for MacWorld anymore. So new announcements could be just around the corner.